Letters to the Editor

Published 10:00 pm, Wednesday, September 4, 2002

'RACIAL PROFILING'

It becomes horrific when applied to murdered kids Murdered kids shouldn't be tarred by racial profiling. It's unjust when people are pulled over for being black, Asian or Hispanic but racial profiling becomes horrific when applied to murdered children.

Last weekend, three people were shot, including a 14-year-old Cambodian American boy who died. All three happened to be non-whites; the police and press quickly labeled their deaths "gang-related."

Only later did police backtrack and say the three victims weren't gang members, but may have known gang members.

Now, I didn't know these three youth. But all my life I've worked on behalf of children, including homeless children, and I know this: If you're under the age of 25 and live in a poor neighborhood, you could live your life like Mother Teresa and still know dozens of gang members -- or wannabe gang members. They go to your high school. They live on your street.

It may seem like a small thing for the police to instantly label these deaths as gang-related. I appreciate the hard work detectives do to solve these crimes. But we need to be careful. Historically, murder victims labeled as being from the wrong side of the tracks haven't gotten as much attention from the press, City Hall and the police.

The murders of celebrities (or killings by celebrities) get endless coverage on CNN. That's why serial killers such as the Green River killer preyed on prostitutes instead of female lawyers and doctors from Bellevue.

The life of every child is precious. Being more careful about the racial profiling of murdered children won't harm any police investigation.

Not being careful deals an unnecessary blow to a family already reeling -- and it drives a deadly wedge of distrust between the police and the community when trust is already low.

Rep. Kip TokudaD-37th District Seattle

P-I ENDORSEMENTS

Should have checked facts before picking Flannigan It is interesting that a Seattle newspaper would take a stand in a crucial race in a Tacoma legislative district without checking its facts or properly evaluating its endorsee's past performance in elected office. Although the two cities are less than an hour apart, the P-I obviously has no idea of what's been going on in Tacoma during the last 20 years.

Your endorsement of Dennis Flannigan is completely misleading to voters. This firm you speak of, "Guru2go," is nothing more than printed business cards that Flannigan handed out while glad-handing and looking for a job. He is the only chair of the Pierce County Transit Board to ever resign without fulfilling his term. He has been cited and fined for violating public disclosure laws. Flannigan accomplished little in his nine years on the County Council.

Furthermore, I am appalled that Flannigan is claiming to have founded Safe Streets. At best he was one of many who made the program come to fruition. The original executive director and several other co-founders of Safe Streets are endorsing another, more qualified and promising candidate. This unreconstructed progressive liberal is all talk and no action. Let's not send another recycled, do-nothing politician to Olympia. Next time, check your facts and base your endorsement on which candidate will get the most done for our district and our state.

Brent YatesTacoma

WAGE WARS

Don't teachers most deserve pay raise? Will someone please, please tell me why a baseball player or an airplane machinist deserves more pay than a teacher does?

Columnist wrong to call invasion a liberal pleaser Syndicated columnist Rich Lowry writes that the "Liberation of Iraq should please liberals." That is a doubtful proposition, since even the former advisers to the first President Bush (James Baker and Brent Scowcroft) oppose any unilateral attempt to liberate Iraq by force. Lowry points to Saddam Hussein's flouting of U.N. resolutions requiring inspections, etc., but fails to note that Iraq has offered to allow such inspections provided the U.N. will agree to lift the sanctions.

These sanctions, Lowry admits, caused the death of a half-million Iraqi children under age 5 between 1991 and 1998 (do Americans fully realize that this is a World Trade Center's worth of children lost every month in a country with less than 10 percent of our population?). He then claims that liberating Iraq would prevent the loss of more children

A military invasion, however, would cause further misery and loss of life. Is it not far better to save the children by simply lifting these deadly sanctions?

For these and many other reasons, I cannot agree with Lowry's conclusion that "an American invasion of Iraq would be downright progressive."

Looks as if some of those protesters were right I guess it has to be faced: Some of those WTO protesters of a couple years back were on the mark when they told us that U.S. corporations could be penalized for violating World Trade Organization rules, but that the American taxpayers would have to pay the penalty.

That's exactly what happened on Aug. 30 when the WTO ruled that a $4 billion penalty can be assessed against the United States for providing unfair tax breaks to such corporations as Boeing, General Electric, Caterpillar and Microsoft.

The result is a double whammy for those of us who are not corporations. First we paid by giving those companies tax breaks that the rest of us had to make up for by paying higher taxes. Now we, not the companies, also have to pay the penalty for their having been given unfair tax advantages.

Bush-Hoover comparison was an insult to Herbert Marianne Means' column comparing George Bush with Herbert Hoover ("Bush must change economic course," Aug. 27) does that president a disservice. Hoover, I mean.

No matter the verdict of history, or hindsight, as a former secretary of the Commerce Department and a student of government, Hoover was capable and prepared when he entered office. He was presented with an economy that lacked the market controls we have today and in which the federal government played a much smaller role than it has since.

The learned scholars whom Means cites will have to agree that Franklin Roosevelt's initial platform was not so dissimilar to Hoover's. FDR's New Deal was invented some time after he took office.

"Gee-Dub," on the other hand, was prepared neither by training nor intelligence. He was handed a strong, stable economy, one that has simply not been able to withstand the hammering his obtuse policies and boardroom deals have inflicted on it.

Allowing oil companies and energy traders like Enron full run of the field for two years extracted untold billions from consumers and businesses alike, and threw long-term planning into confusion. Power, transportation and consumer's disposable income all felt the bite. The airlines, for example, were already in trouble from this cause prior to 9/11.

Then he pushed through tax breaks for the wealthy, a scheme advertised as an economic stimulus. The result instead has been a drag, creating deficits out of surpluses, leading to higher interest rates in the future and withdrawing significant government demand from the market.

Means is right when she implies stagnation and recession will be the result of Bush's continued political favoritism and intransigent addiction to tax cuts. She is wrong to ascribe to him the purpose and principle that motivated Herbert Hoover.

Alan HarveySeattle

SECRET COURT

Abuses cited came under prior administration On the Aug. 25 Letters to the Editor page, Alan Cook writes, "Now that the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has slapped the hands of John Ashcroft, the Justice Department and the FBI. ... "

It is too bad Cook did not do some investigation before writing his letter. A simple Web check will find out the facts. The 75 cases the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court reported on were all committed before September 2000. Who was the head of the Justice Department then? Janet Reno. Who was found to have lied in one of the cases? FBI Director Louis Freeh. Who was president? Bill Clinton.

To paraphrase Cook: Unfortunately for Americans, the president (Bill Clinton), vice president (Al Gore) and attorney general (Janet Reno) all fit the description of individuals who espouse unwarranted secretiveness and a history of obfuscation.